Saturday, April 7, 2012

I've been enjoying listening to Ric Edelman lately now that his radio show has been archived online. Good stuff! I have read his books and think I have learned more about investing from Ric than from any other one source.

With my background in sales I also though get a kick out of following his need to recommend his own services; he owns a firm. So sometimes the advice you wait for with bated breath turns out to be "be sure to drink your Ovaltine get a financial adviser". He must be forgiven for this I think.

One tactic he uses is to scare you into thinking you might not be able to handle certain things yourself. That's not to say a financial adviser might not be a good idea for about anybody, and in my day certain things have meant I needed help - from a tax preparer for instance. But for Ric he hates to admit not every subject is undefeatably difficult.

For example Ric often warns that the distribution requirements for regular IRA's when you reach 70.5 years are needlessly complicated and carry a stiff 50% penalty for insufficient withdrawal. Yes, this has been helpful to know. You can't deny it is a stupidly written set of rules, the time of year you hit 70.5 matters and incredibly also the age of the beneficiary, if your spouse, matters [what?]. However, it is a little ridiculous to claim you need a financial adviser to handle this. This is the day and age of calculators of all kinds in cyberspace, and anymore you really don't need to bookmark, you might as well just google when you need to. And of course there is a neat online calculator available to crank out the facts and also factor in the complicating age factors. How much you want to bet your financial adviser just pulls one of these things up?

One final nod to maybe he is right: he keeps mentioning you have to navigate a lot of stuff while in your dotage and says "good luck". He may have the last laugh with "mr. no-adviser" [me].

note: it looks like the hyperlinks will be in blue but I can't be sure by the preview. Links below if needed.

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I guess we will find out whether or not I should be blogging. But here goes; I really can get going on some of these things, so we'll put it out there and see if we get yawns, catcalls, or maybe some responses.